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Pork, Minced

A stew of minced pork with onions, apples, butter, flour, stock, mustard, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pork, Minced

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the pork into very small dice.

  2. If you don't have gravy or good stock, boil the bones and trimmings for at least 1 hour, then strain and boil rapidly until reduced to 1 pint.

Make the stew

  1. Melt the butter or fat in a stewpan and fry the onions until lightly browned.

  2. Add the apples and fry until tender but not broken.

  3. Sprinkle in the flour, add a good pinch of mustard, stir, and cook gently for a few minutes.

  4. Add the stock and stir until boiling.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, then boil gently for about 5 minutes.

  6. Add the meat and lemon juice, then let the stewpan stand for about 30 minutes just below simmering point.

Serve

  1. Serve in a border of rice, mashed potatoes, or garnished with toasted bread.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold roast pork
Provides the meat, which is already cooked and only needs to warm through in the sauce.
Onions
Browning in the butter builds savory sweetness and body into the stew base.
Apples
Soften into the sauce while keeping some shape, adding sweetness and a fruity tang.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce when cooked briefly with the fat.
Butter or good fat
Carries the frying flavour and adds richness to the onions and apples.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the stew, adding savory depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the stock to the flour. Stir the stock in while the flour is cooking in the fat and keep stirring until boiling, so the flour disperses evenly and the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, butter, flour, lemon, mustard, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, butter, flour, lemon, mustard, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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